In her story, "Boys and Girls," Alice Munro depicts the hardships and successes of the rite
             of passage into adulthood through her portrayal of a young narrator and her brother.
             Through the narrator, the subject of the profound unfairness of sex-role stereotyping, and
             the effect this has on the rites of passage into adulthood is presented. The protagonist in
             Munro's story, unidentified by a name, goes through an extreme and radical initiation into
             adulthood, similar to that of her younger brother. Munro proposes that gender
             stereotyping, relationships, and a loss of innocence play an extreme, and
             often-controversial role in the growing and passing into adulthood for many young
             children. Initiation, or the rite of passage into adulthood, is, according to the theme of
             Munro's story, both a mandatory and necessary experience. Alice Munro's
             creation of an unnamed and therefore undignified, female protagonist proposes that the
             narrator is without identity or the prospect of power. Unlike the narrator, the young
             brother Laird is named – a name that means "lord" – and implies that he, by virtue of his
             gender alone, is invested with identity and is to become a master. This stereotyping in
             names alone seems to suggest that gender does play an important role in the initiation of
             young children into adults. Growing up, the narrator loves to help her father outside with
             the foxes, rather than to aid her mother with "dreary and peculiarly depressing" work done
             in the kitchen (425). In this escape from her predestined duties, the narrator looks upon
             her mother's assigned tasks to be "endless," while she views the work of her father as
             "ritualistically important" (425). This view illustrates her happy childhood, filled with
             dreams and fantasy. Her contrast between the work of her father and the chores of her
             mother, illustrate an arising struggle between what the narrator is expected to do ...